One thing all these stories fail to convey, though, is that the vast majority of the deals appear to be for senators' personal healthcare causes. Reid's lengthy amendment, which spliced the various compromises into the bill, includes proposals by:

Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to let lower-income workers opt out of their employers' health insurance plan in exchange for a voucher that they could spend on an individual policy sold through the new exchange;

and Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) to speed the development of treatments for rare diseases.

Other provisions whose provenance I couldn't determine right away dealt with family nurse practitioner training, grants for wellness programs in small businesses and university-based support for pregnant and parenting teens and young women.

This isn't quite the same as funding bridges to nowhere. Wyden in particular gains no parochial advantage with his initiative. And even those who have the interests of home-state medical centers in mind are still promoting public health. Still, the Senate healthcare reform legislation is starting to look a bit like a highway bill. And that's not a good thing.